Yesterday President Trump blamed China for the coronavirus

On April 10, 2020 I had blogged about how President Trump was Shifting blame elsewhere, and I introduced a handy Wheel of Blame to keep track of where he was pointing his finger. Then on April 21, 2020 I posted about how Trump wants to get reelected in the worst way – by blaming the W.H.O. and cutting their funding during our pandemic crisis.

Now he spun the Wheel of Blame again, and as shown above, and described in an article at The Guardian on April 28, 2020 Trump says China could have stopped Covid-19 and suggests US will seek damages. Blaming a major supplier of ours, who could delay shipments of masks, does not sound like a great idea to me.

Our pinball president

Our president Donald Trump is not like someone playing pinball. He instead is more like a pinball in a machine – just bouncing around off of bumpers and flippers.  Donald ignored and downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, as described in an article by Tamara Keith at NPR on April 21, 2020 titled Timeline: what Trump has said and done about the coronavirus. He also gives overly optimistic forecasts about when the pandemic will end: Easter, May 1 st, etc.    

Trump began holding daily briefings which should have aimed at informing the public. He should just have been the ringmaster of that circus. Instead he and the vice president became the clowns.  An editorial on April 9 in the Wall Street Journal titled Trump’s Wasted Briefings contained the following quote (which I have taken from an April 10 article by Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics The Point titled What the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board gets exactly right about Trump’s problematic coronavirus briefings):

“But sometime in the past three weeks Mr. Trump seems to have concluded that the briefings could be a showcase for him. Perhaps they substitute in his mind for the campaign rallies he can no longer hold because of the risks. Perhaps he resented the media adulation that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been receiving for his daily show. Whatever the reason, the briefings are all now about the President.”

This week the president said something breathtakingly stupid in a briefing. On April 24, 2020 at Snopes Dan Evon had a brief article with a title asking Did Trump suggest injecting disinfectants as COVID-19 treatment? He did! AT CNN a longer article described How a media-distracted Trump ended up derailing his own briefing. Later he claimed he’d been sarcastic, and eventually he tweeted:

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately? They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”

He reminds me of a recent GEICO commercial about making Poor Decisions in a horror movie.  

There is no such thing as the optimum design for a bicycle (or other product)

There are different designs for various times and places, each of which has strengths and weaknesses. As shown above, the first popular design was the ‘penny farthing‘ or ‘ordinary’ – which had a large front wheel driven directly by the pedals.

Next came the diamond-framed ‘safety’ bicycle with a drive chain from the pedals to the rear wheel, as shown above via an 1896 model. Later versions added geared hubs or derailleurs and center-pull or side-pull hand brakes on both wheels. Lots of us think that this still-current frame design must be optimal because it is what racers use.

But back in the 1930’s there also was an early recumbent bicycle, the Velo Velocar designed by Charles Mochet, as shown above. Recumbent seating gave it lower drag. After it broke a world speed record, the UCI solemnly redefined it as not being a bicycle.    

In 1967, when I was a junior in high school, my parents bought me a Moulton, which had been imported by Huffy and sold in the Sears catalog. As shown above in a brief Pathé newsreel, it has 16” wheels and a suspension. An ad for it in the October 28, 1966 issue of LIFE magazine crowed:   

“The new bike for adults is the Huffy Moulton, created by English engineer Alex Moulton, and the first basic advance in bicycle design in 70 years. The first thing you notice about the Huffy-Moulton is its nimbleness. You’re up, off and around the corner in a flash. The small wheels give instant acceleration because there is less inertia. It is simply easier to spin a light small wheel than it is a big one. (Spin a roller skate wheel and you’ll get the idea.) The gearing is designed for the wheel size. In ‘high’ one revolution of the pedals carries you forward more than six feet, farther than many regular bicycles. In ‘low’ gear you have the power to take most hills sitting down. Steering is lively. It’s agile when dodging a rut or scampering around a corner. Cycling, a British magazine, says, ‘It manouevres like a dream, and permits a ‘U’ turn in half the usual radius.’ The Moulton actually has shock absorbers. The front wheel has rubber and steel shocks in the head tube. The rear wheel has a cushion between the pivoting rear fork and the frame. The bike has the same seat and handle bar positions as a regular bicycle, with a full-length wheel base. One model fits adults of both sexes and all sizes. The comfortable spring seat adjusts up and down in a jiffy without tools.” 

I rode my Moulton a couple miles each way when I commuted to Carnegie-Mellon University. It worked well on those brief trips. A couple bungee cords secured my briefcase to the large rear luggage carrier. The Moulton had chrome-plated steel rims carrying 1-3/8 inch wide tires, inflated to 60 psi. After two or three weeks rolling resistance increased significantly. Tire pressure had dropped to about 50 psi, and a few minutes of pumping back to 60 psi was required. But side pull brakes did not work well in wet weather. The Sturmey Archer 4-speed rear hub had a long shift cable path, and the cable tended to stretch until only three speeds were obtained reliably.

During the 1970s mountain bikes were developed in California. I remember seeing ads for mountain bikes with a combination of wide tires and derailleurs on the back pages in Sunset magazine, long before they went national. Eventually, as shown above, mountain bikes were produced with suspensions. Later on ‘fat tire bikes’ with even wider tires (~5 inches) appeared. They could handle snow in winter, or sand dunes in summer.  

This post was inspired by an August 2019 One Hand Speaks podcast (episode #121) from Alejandro Anastasio about his 1968 Schwinn Mini Twinn tandem bike.

Is this a dead chicken? (Punchline from a family story)

Some statements only make sense if you are familiar with a story told in your family. My mother told us one about two of her younger cousins back in the city of Cincinnati. The older one, Gil, was in the fourth grade. His school class recently had been on a field trip to a meat packing plant. They were eating fried chicken for dinner when Gil inquired:

“How was this chicken killed?”   

His younger brother Phil (in the second grade), who never had considered where the food on his plate came from, pushed his plate away and asked in disgust:

“Is this a dead chicken?

In our family that punchline is used to describe situations where you are dismayed to find how things actually work. I don’t know if Phil became a vegetarian.   

Those whose childhood included grandparents on farms know how a chicken is killed. On page 113 of the 1989 book Bill Neal’s Southern Cooking he describes the process:

“When my grandmother wanted chicken and dumplings, my sister and I were sent to do battle in the hen yard. Brandishing little rods with crookneck ends, we felt like Roman soldiers among the Sabines. In wild pursuit, we ran in a crouch, with our garnering weapons outstretched to catch the hooks around a leg of the prey. Success depended on tripping the hen up with a jerk of the left hand while grabbing its feet quickly with the right hand. Squawking and head down, the hen was received by my waiting grandmother, who dispatched it with a quick wring of the neck.”

Back on March 1, 2013 in a post titled Does your speaking voice sound like a little girl? I mentioned another family punchline: “You’re making my horse sick.”

The image of a piece of fried chicken served at Popeyes came from Wikimedia Commons.

There also are comedy routines with well-known punchlines, like the Saturday Night Live skit More Cowbell (about Blue Oyster Cult recording The Reaper). Probably the most cowbell is in Hugh Masekela’s instrumental Grazing in the Grass.  

Trump wants to get reelected in the worst way – by blaming the W.H.O. and cutting their funding during our pandemic crisis

On April 10, 2020 I blogged about how President Trump was Shifting blame elsewhere. Just four days later on April 14, 2020 there was an article at the New York Times titled Criticized for pandemic response, Trump tries shifting blame to the W.H.O. An article at FactCheck on April 15, 2020 titled FactChecking Trump’s attack on the WHO said Trump’s claims were false, misleading, and unsubstantiated.

A month ago on March 19, 2020 I blogged about What are Americans doing about coronavirus, and who do they trust for information? Overall 71% trusted the WHO, and 38% trusted President Trump. Of Republicans 72% trusted President Trump and 64% trusted the WHO. Of Democrats 86% trusted the WHO, and 14% trusted President Trump. Of Independents 63% trusted the WHO, and 34% trusted President Trump. Presumably Trump’s goal is to get Americans to have less trust in the WHO.

What will the rest of the world think about the U.S. halting funding and hobbling the WHO? People likely will die as a result. I think the world will long remember us for being jerks who cannot be trusted to help our neighbors. It’s worse than metaphorically shooting ourselves in the foot – more like stepping on a grenade and blowing off our foot.  

The image of a cartoon man is adapted from Wikimedia Commons.  

The nineteenth virus superficially sounds logical, but instead just is nonsense

Just because something sounds logical does not mean it is right. An article by Brian Niemietz at the New York Daily News on March 12, 2020 described how Coronavirus skeptic Rush Limbaugh thinks COVID-19 means there were 18 other COVIDs. It does not – instead it just means that the virus was identified in the year 2019.

Another article by David Mukkelson at Snopes on March 26, 2020 is titled Does COVID stand for ‘Chinese-Originated Viral Infectious Disease? He said a more detailed naming also is false:

 “COVID literally stand for Chinese Originated Viral Infectious Disease and the number 19 is due to this being the 19th virus to come out of China.”

Still another article by Clara O’Rourke at PolitiFact on March 30, 2020 titled COVID stands for coronavirus disease 2019 repeated that the quote shown above is false.

But weeks later a video by David Pakman at FreeSpeechTV on April 16, 2020 was titled Kellyanne (Conway) thinks COVD-19 means “19th Coronavirus” and discussed at Politifact.

Joe Biden has a problem – he’s a mostly recovered stutterer

I am retired and considered by some to be “over the hill.” But I still am younger than either of our U.S. presidential candidates - Donald Trump (73) and Joe Biden (77). Both have been accused of being so old they are mentally deficient. If they had more common sense and less arrogance, then they might have decided it was time for someone younger to run the country.

We can expect to hear more in the near future about Biden’s supposed incompetence. On April 17, 2020 there was an article by Zachary Evans in the National Review titled Biden stumbles through televised interview on coronavirus response: ‘You know, there’s – during World War II, you know, where Roosevelt came up with a thing.’ On March 8, 2020 there was a Fox News video titled Giuliani tears into Biden: ‘The man has something wrong with him.’ What’s wrong with Joe? It’s simple - he stutters.

There is a long article by John Hendrickson in The Atlantic on January/February 2020 titled What Joe Biden can’t bring himself to say. Another article by Jack Brewster on March 19, 2020 in Newsweek is titled Joe Biden’s stutter explains a lot about how he speaks. I should know – I have one too.

Biden’s stutter will make him appear less competent in a debate than Donald Trump’s glib stream of lies. But as some ads once said, when the White House phone rings at 3:00 AM I would rather have Joe answer it than Donald.   

Are two heads really better than one?

On February 21, 2020 I had blogged about a Savage Chickens cartoon in a post titled Let a Freakbot take care of your anxiety about public speaking. Today Doug Savage had another cartoon (shown above) titled Time for an Upgrade. Note that those two screams are slightly different: ‘Aaaaauugh’ and “Aaauugh.’

According to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and The Yale Book of Quotations the sentence “Two heads are better than one.” is attributed to John Heywood in a 1546 book, Dialogue of Proverbs. In a piece On the Reading of Old Books C. S. Lewis had a longer version:

“Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”

Remembering John Prine – a great storyteller

On April 7, 2020 the country-folk singer-songwriter John Prine died. In Billboard there was an obituary article by Annie Reuter titled Americana legend John Prine dies at age 73 from coronavirus. In Rolling Stone there was a longer article by Stephen L. Betts and Patrick Doyle titled John Prine, one of America’s greatest songwriters, dead at 73. There also was an article on April 13, 2020 by Patrick Doyle titled John Prine: The last days and beautiful life of an American original. And in 2017 there was another article by Patrick Doyle titled Inside the life of John Prine, the Mark Twain of American songwriting.

John excelled at telling stories via songs. His very first album in 1971 included two of my many favorites - Sam Stone, a song about a veteran who died from opioid addiction and Hello In There, a song about the elderly. At Performing Songwriter on October 10, 2016 there was an article by Lydia Hutchinson titled Behind the songs of John Prine. She mentioned eight songs (for which I have links to live versions on YouTube): Dear Abby, Spanish Pipedream, Sam Stone, Hello in There, Souvenirs, Illegal Smile, Paradise, and Donald and Lydia.

Some of John’s lyrics are hilarious but strange, like those for Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone. There also are humorous stories about how some songs came to be, like Donnie Fritt’s dream house in Nashville leading up to The Oldest Baby in the World. Living in the Future describes how wrong predictions can be:

“We are living in the future, I’ll tell you how I know

I read it in the paper fifteen years ago

We’re all driving rocket ships and talking with our minds

And wearing turquoise jewelry and standing in soup lines

We are standing in soup lines”

One of his recent songs from the last album, The Tree of Forgiveness, on the topic of lust and farmer’s daughters, is Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln, Nebraska 1967 (Crazy Bone). John described how the setting became Lincoln rather than Norfolk –  the latter is poor for rhymes, so instead he said:

“If they knew what you were thinkin’, they’d have run you out of Lincoln

Just blame it on that old crazy bone”

and previously:

“When you got hell to pay, put the truth on layaway,

And blame it on that old crazy bone”

I previously blogged about another song on how It’s a Big Old Goofy World in a February 25, 2020 post titled Two songs stuffed with bagfuls of clichés. Finally, John even told us what he would do When I Get to Heaven.

Shifting blame elsewhere

When he was president, Harry Truman used to have a sign like the one shown above on his desk. ‘The Buck Stops Here’ meant that as a real leader he accepted responsibility for running the country.

But Donald Trump refuses to accept responsibility. He has falsely claimed to have inherited an ‘empty’ stockpile of medical equipment from the previous president. That excuse might pass by back before the halfway point in his term. Right now, as he campaigns for reelection, it is absurd.

On April 9, 2020 at the Associated Press (AP) there was an article by Jonathan Lemire titled As pandemic deepens, Trump cycles through targets to blame. The Wheel of Blame shown above is for keeping track of which of 19 common targets he currently is using. It was modified from this template at Wikimedia Commons. 

  

The Queen’s speech – inspiring a kingdom in just 4-1/2 minutes

On Sunday April 5, 2020 Queen Elizabeth II spoke  about coronavirus for 4-1/2 minutes, and about 520 words. You can read a transcript here. That time is at the low end for a typical Toastmasters speech. Her brief presentation is an excellent example of writing.

Going on a wild goose chase by treating coronavirus with an unproven malaria drug

Donald Trump keeps on showing us an alarming combination of arrogance and ignorance. His recent promotion of  fake hope via a malaria drug is shown in a 3-minute video from Guardian News on April 5, 2020 titled Trump grilled over continued promotion of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus. But Dr. Anthony Fauci had said there only was anecdotal evidence it works, which is a polite adult way of saying that all we really have so far is fairy tales. Medical science rightly requires that we keep from fooling ourselves by doing double-blind clinical trials comparing a treatment against an inert placebo.  

On April 6th there was an article by Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine titled Why Trump is overruling scientists to pursue his pet coronavirus drug. There was another angry article by David Gorski at Respectful Insolence titled Hydroxychloroquine and covid-19: science-based medicine has no chance against Donald Trump, Peter Navarro, and Dr. Oz. Dr. Gorski pointed out that Trump’s claim there is nothing to lose is nonsense, since that drug has serious side effects (impaired vision and seizures). And on April 7th there was an article by Charles Piller in Science titled Former FDA leaders decry emergency authorization of malaria drugs for coronavirus.

The goose image came from Wikimedia Commons.

An inept ‘HeyPal’ phishing email

Recently I received a fraudulent phishing email claiming that PayPal had noted unusual activity on my account.

But, as shown above, the notice was suspicious in two ways, shown via added colored outlines. The first was asking me to log “in to” my account. The second was referring to Singapore at the bottom after giving a U.S. toll free phone number.

Even more hilariously, a full-screen view of that email shows that the scratchpad.io editor was used to create it!

A peculiarly limited analysis of how religion affects fears reported in a 2018 U. S. survey

On March 18 there was a post by Ryan P. Burge at the Religion in Public blog titled Does religion impact what people are afraid of?

His second paragraph says:

“The Chapman Survey of American Fears was published recently on the Association of Religion Data Archives. It was a survey of just over a thousand people per year from 2014 to 2018. It’s unique because it asks about fear in a staggering number of scenarios. For instance, in the 2018 wave, it asks how fearful respondents are of fifty-three different things. This battery included threats like nuclear attack, needles, flying, an economic collapse, and yes – even a pandemic. It also included a host of questions about religious belief, behavior, and belonging that helps us understand how religion mitigates or exacerbates feelings of fear.”

Ryan’s blog post displays a bar chart titled Fear Based on Religious Affiliation with the percentage of Catholics, Protestants, or Nones who said they were Afraid or Very Afraid of each of those 53 things. But, when you look at the Chapman blog post from October 16, 2018 titled America’s Top Fears 2018 you will find that 94 are listed – not just 53. Ryan only showed 56% of the survey questions! None of the Top 10 Fears included by the Chapman blog post are Ryan’s bar chart. The first three are #11 Cyber-terrorism, #12 The U.S. will be involved in another world war, and #15 Economic/financial collapse. Only 6 of their Top 20 are in his bar chart, and just 21 of the Top 50. (There really also is a 95th fear, which I mentioned in my October 19, 2018 blog post titled You probably won’t hear public speaking coaches discuss the 2018 Chapman Survey of American Fears).

Ryan’s fourth paragraph begins by asking what Americans fear the most, although his chart really answers a second different question – what do the most Americans fear. The first sentence in his sixth paragraph similarly says:

“Beyond this, the data paint a clear picture -Catholics are more afraid in almost every scenario compared to Protestants or the religiously unaffiliated.”

It is possible to calculate Fear Scores to really answer the first question. Back on October 30, 2015 I blogged about how According to the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears, adults are less than Afraid of federal Government Corruption and only Slightly Afraid of Public Speaking.

I found three other articles and blog posts which referred to Ryan’s blog post. On March 18, 2020 Hemant Mehta in Friendly Atheist at Patheos had an article titled Survey finds religious Americans are more afraid of everything. On March 23, 2020 at Psychology Today Phil Zuckerman blogged about Living in Fear? And on March 26, 2020 in the Godzooks blog at Patheos Rick Snedeker had a post titled Survey: Americans mostly unafraid, but Catholics seem a bit jumpy. None of these three caught that Ryan had only analyzed 53 of those 94 (or 95) fears.

My brain is full. (I am out of memory).

Yesterday’s Dilbert cartoon has the following dialogue:

"Pointy Haired Boss: Why aren’t you working?

Alice: My brain is full.

Pointy Haired Boss: I’ll check back later.

Alice: I won’t remember you."

I don’t think Scott Adams realized he was recycling a well-known punch line from a classic Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson which had been:

“Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.”

He might have been inspired by having seen an out of memory message on a computer. Back on June 21, 2008 I had blogged about how He ought to be good, he’s using my act.

March 31, 2020 earthquake in Idaho

On March 31, 2020 at 5:52 PM there was a magnitude 6.5 earthquake here in Idaho. It was centered about 78 miles from Boise, in the mountains near Stanley (population ~60) and about 40 miles east from Cascade (population ~1000). A USA Today article by Steve Kiggins was titled ‘The floor was moving’: 6.5 earthquake strikes in Idaho, largest in the state since 1963. An Idaho Statesman article by Ruth Brown on April 1, 2020 was titled 60-plus aftershocks follow magnitude 6.5 earthquake in Idaho, avalanche closes Idaho 21. No one was killed but 3 of 4 stone crosses on a church here in Boise were damaged. This minor crisis gave us a break from thinking about coronavirus.

The 6.5 magnitude for this quake is just slightly smaller than the 6.7 for the 1994 Northridge Earthquake which occurred in a Los Angeles neighborhood and killed 57 people.